


Every Day is Exactly the Same

by oceansinmychest



Category: Red Dead Redemption, Westworld (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 18:45:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11583945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: John Marston lives again.And again.And again.





	Every Day is Exactly the Same

**Author's Note:**

> Every since I watched WestWorld awhile back, this has been on my mind: John Marson as a host.

John Marston lives again.

And again.

And again.

Home is where the heart is. More than anything, an outlaw turned failed apostle yearns to go back home to his wife and son, Abigail and Jack Marston. These days, that's all that matters.

Across the Western frontier, he giddies up atop a fair mare named Mary-Anne. She's got a strawberry coat with a blonde mane. He's broken her in personally. Within his gloved hands, he grips a pair of black reins. Into Sweetwater, he rides.

The sun burns his lips. He bites on them, but it doesn't alleviate the thirst for a better tomorrow.

In town, he tips his hat to the setting sun. He tethers his horse to a small watering burrough. She drinks not because she has to, but because she can; it's wired into her mechanical nature.

A man with a red bandanna around his neck hooks arms with a prostitute from the local bordello.

John's scowl tightens into something fierce. Yet, a glimmer of amusement shines in his mud brown eyes.

“It's wantin' that gets so many folks in trouble.”

There's a conspiratory wink.

His spurs jingle when he walks.

He steps foot inside the bar.

He looks to the Madam in Sweetwater's brothel. She works her magic in red and black, a devil with amber eyes. She tells a visitor that he can be whoever he wants to be. At that, John downs his whiskey. He drowns in sick liquor. Liquid fire settling in his belly. All he wants is to lead quiet life on the farm with his wife and son.

The bounty hunter finishes his whiskey double and exits as quietly as he came. This time, no guns are a-blazing, the guests too enamored by the cheap harlequin tricks.

He bounds his horse and exits, lost to the desert abyss. Far removed from Sweetwater, he sets up a makeshift camp: cougar skin draped across a teepee made of sturdy branches. That night, a fire burns brightly. Somewhere along the way, he encounters a strange man.

A strange man who just so happens to be a devil in disguise.

This time, the Stranger is the Man in Black. No mustache. No fiery eyes. Ice blue, instead.

"We really doing this again, John? I thought you a reasonable man, but you're not a man."

"You better take that back, Mister."

_Bang._

Just like that, he's dead again.

Far away from home, John dreams of Dutch's gang. The men he ran with as someone and something much younger.

This path curves in endless circles, a maze that holds neither a beginning nor an end.

None of this is real.

When he awakens, it's not the sand that he tastes on his lips or the fiery sting of perdition. Host, John Marston, comes to life in a technical room with a behavior analyst shining a light in his eyes. There's a slab in the man's hands, marking attributes and choice personality choices to help a guest find a more satisfying ending.

There's a vulnerability in being as nude as the day you were born. His arms hang limp by his sides. Underneath the clinical lighting, the scars adorning his cheeks become more apparent.

“And who are you today?” Bernard Lowe asks to keep the plot consistent.

Marston nods, as though he knows the answer, and is unable to say it.

"Name's John Marston."

"You can drop the accent, John."

The Southern twang fades into an automated, tinny sound.

Bernard makes sense of all the dark, “You're wired this way: to regret the past, to make the same mistakes, to yearn for inner peace, to endlessly search for something.”

John thinks about Dutch, his family, the feds, the crooks and the cons they keep him farther from his desires. His dreams.

“Do you believe there to be something larger than your world?” Doc Lowe inquires.

“Never been one to believe in God,” he quips.

The spark in his eyes betrays the fact.

“You can wake up now, John,” a voice says.

And he does, back in Sweetwater again.

The day plays out exactly the same. He implores for a few guests to embark on the journey with him, searching for Dutch's men who have wronged him. Betrayed him.

Just as the feds will inevitably do.

When he thinks himself at peace, he isn't.

John Marson is a marked man, doomed to continue about this cylical path. He stands inside his family barn. Nobly, he believes that he has spared Jack and Abigail a cruel fate in watching him die. Tomorrow, the scene will repeat itself.

A dozen men knock down the wooden doors. He holds a single gun in his hand, an old revolver that has to spin in order to be shot and reloaded.

“My side ain't chosen. My side was given.”

He speaks with a glimpse of self-awareness that hurts far more than the barrage of gunshots.

A guest, pretending to be the feds, shoots him down.

John staggers in place, blood oozing out of his mouth.

Grazed by a million bullets, his body convulses. This time, there's a woman among the feds. Tomorrow, there will be a man who smiles too wide. The day after that, a child among the wreckage. His body will be torn apart by the shrapnel veil. The gods will reassemble his machinery build.

 


End file.
